1) NGT says no to age-old practice of straw burning :-
- Stubble burning is the deliberate setting fire of the straw stubble that remains after wheat and other grains have been harvested.
- The burning of stubble, contrasted with alternatives such as ploughing the stubble back into the ground has a number of consequences and effects on the environment Stubble burning:
- Quickly clears the field and is cheap.
- Kills weeds, including those resistant to herbicide.
- Kills slugs and other pests.
- Can reduce nitrogen tie-up
However, it has a number of harmful effects on the environment:
- Loss of nutrients.
- Pollution from smoke.
- Damage to electrical and electronic equipment from floating threads of conducting waste.
- Risk of fires spreading out of control
Note:-There is a perception that stubble burning contributes to atmospheric CO2. However carbon dioxide releases are only slightly greater than those from natural decomposition.
- The practice is followed by farmers not only to save time under the rice-wheat crop rotation cycle to clear the land of residue of one harvest and sow the next, it is also believed that it makes the land more fertile and kill pests.
- A Bench headed by the NGT chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar directed the Delhi government and the four northern States of Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh to check the bi-annual menace, which the farmers engage in to save time between sowing of wheat and rice. The tribunal also announced a fine of Rs. 2,500 to Rs. 15,000 on farmers found indulging in straw burning.
Analysis:-
- It is easy to penalize the farmer and put a check on straw burning, however what the NGT has failed to mention is that , it has not suggested any alternative to crop management or asked any government authority to look at the issue in holistic manner.
- India’s farmers are marginal farmers and it is easy for them to light a fire than to afford a machine .Hence due consideration for alternative is necessity and promotion of the alternative through various propaganda means is essential.Consensus building can yield a better and sustaining prospect than imposing a law.
- Finding a policy or legal solution to environmental problems is easy , and due to this very reason the officials who will monitor the stubble burning may engage in corruption practices. The reason is simple, if there is no viable alternative , the farmers will do what they did before, and now after the declaration of penal provisions by NGT , they will be subjected to coercion and leaving space for corruption.
- Possible Alternative:-
- At harvest, it is best to chop the straw as fine as possible and spread both the straw and chaff across as wide an area as possible. A chaff spreader can be added on to a combine at reasonable cost. Chopping straw does not influence its rate of breakdown but it does facilitate harrowing or cultivation which places the straw in closer contact with soil which does hasten decomposition.
- Bio-ethanol Refinery :-
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Can play an important role in solving the chronic problem of straw burning of leftover agro-based produce especially from wheat and rice feedstocks.
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Benefit farmers economically, as they would be paid for their agro-based produce to extract bio-ethanol
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- The issue of straw burning can only be resolved if ICAR (Indian Council of Agricultural Research ) provides a viable alternative which is affordable for the poor farmers.The Government should engage in awareness campaign to sensitize the farmers and farmers themselves should be convinced to do away with the age-old practice.
2)SAFAR :-System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting And Research
- SAFAR envisages a research based management system where strategies of air pollution mitigation go hand in hand with nation’s economic development to target a win-win scenario.
- Air Quality indicators are monitored at about 3 m height from the ground with online sophisticated instruments. These instruments are operated round the clock and data is recorded and stored at every 5 minute interval for quality check and further analysis.
- Pollutants monitored: PM1, PM2.5, PM10, Ozone, CO, NOx (NO, NO2), SO2, BC, Methane (CH4), Non-methane hydrocarbons (NMHC), VOC’s, Benzene, MercuryMonitored Meteorological Parameters: UV Radiation, Rainfall, Temperature, Humidity, Wind speed, Wind direction, solar radiation
3)Swachh Bharat Cess at the rate of 0.5% :-
- Swachh Bharat Cess is not another tax but a step towards involving each and every citizen in making contribution to Swachh Bharat. In this direction, the Government has decided to impose, with effect from 15th November 2015, a Swachh Brarat Cess at the rate of 0.5% on all services, which are presently liable to service tax. This will translate into a tax of 50 paisa only on every one hundred rupees worth of taxable services. The proceeds from this cess will be exclusively used for Swachh Bharat initiatives.
- Cleanliness also has huge impact on public health. Dirty surroundings also cause many diseases, like, malaria, dengue, diarrohea, jaundice, cholera etc., with associated high public health expenditure. According to the Government of India estimates, expenditure on health adds up to Rs.6,700 crore annually (approximately Rs.60 per capita). Increased allocation for Swachh Bharat Abhiyan can prevent many of these diseases with consequential benefit to one and all.
4)South Asian Regional Intelligence and Coordination Centre on Transnational Organized Crime (SARICC-TOC):-
- During the recently held International Conference ‘Networking the Networks’ in national capital, delegates from India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Maldives, Sri Lanka and Myanmar discussed threadbare the modalities for creation of a regional platform to be called ‘South Asian Regional Intelligence and Coordination Centre on Transnational Organized Crime’ (SARICC-TOC), for information/intelligence sharing to enable all Member States to respond Transnational organized crimes.
- The SARICC meeting concluded with representatives of the proposed SARICC-TOC, namely, India, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Maldives, Sri Lanka and Myanmar and finalized the draft structure and Terms of reference of SARICC-TOC.
- This is all the more relevant since the South Asia region lacks such regional coordination mechanism on the lines of Central Asian Regional Information and Coordination Centre (CARICC) or Asia-Pacific Information & Coordination Center for Combating Drug Crimes (APICC) to facilitate criminal intelligence sharing and operational coordination related to organized crime, including illicit drug trafficking and related activities such as precursor trafficking and money laundering
5)RGI releases Census 2011 data on literacy, workers and educational levels :-
- The Registrar General & Census Commissioner of India released data of Census 2011 on Highest Educational Level Attained among population attending educational institution by age and sex.
- Data :- Below Primary occupies the major share of 32.6% followed by Primary (25.2%), Middle (15.7%), Matric (11.1%), Higher Secondary (8.6%) and Graduate & above (4.5%).
- Observation:- During the decade 2001-11, improvement is observed at Middle and above educational levels and decline in percentage share at lower levels (below-Primary and Primary). The improvements at higher educational levels are indication of educational advancement in the country during the decade 2001-11.
6) Prime Minister’s 15-point programme for socio-economic-educational development and empowerment of minorities :-
Theme – Enhancing opportunities for Education
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Equitable availability of ICDS( Integrated Child Development Services )
- Improving access to school education
- Greater resources for school education
- Modernizing Madarsa Education
- Scholarship
- Improving educational infrastructure through the Maulana Azad Education Foundation
Theme-Equitable Share in Economic Activities and Employment
7.Self-Employment and Wage Employment for the poor -Swarnajayanti Gram Swarojgar Yojana (SGSY),Swarnajayanti Sahari Swarojgar Yojana (SJSRY),National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS)
8.Upgradation of skills through technical training
9.Enhanced credit support for economic activities
10.Recruitment to State and Central Service
Theme-Improving the conditions of living of minorities
11.Equitable share in rural housing scheme
12.Improvement in condition of slums inhabited by minority communities
7) iLEDtheway Microsite:-
- Union Minister of State (IC) for Power, Coal and New & Renewable Energy launched the microsite www.iledtheway.in
- In today’s era of Digital India, the microsite will attempt to reach out to all citizens in the country and spread awareness about the nation-wide movement of #iLEDtheway. Through this microsite, consumers can take a pledge of switching to LED bulbs, which are safer, brighter and consume less energy.
- The Microsite visitors can join the movement by simply clicking “Take a Pledge” tab which is prominently displayed on the homepage. Consumers who do not have access to the LED bulb distribution under the DELP scheme in their city/state, can pre-register for the scheme by sharing their contact details. It will also give exciting information on the reduction in CO2 emissions, energy saved, avoided peak demand and is filled with pictures, videos, distribution centre details in each state and more.
- DELP :-Domestic Efficient Lighting Programme (DELP)
- The government aims to replace 77 crore conventional bulbs and CFLs with the LEDs under DELP and 3.5 crore street lights over 3-year period, making it the largest LED based lighting programme in the world.Initiatives of distributing LED bulbs save upto 85 lakh KWh every day and have helped in reduction of close to 15,000 tonnes of CO2 per day.
8) SATYAM :-
- A new programme called SATYAM-“Science and Technology of Yoga and Meditation” has been launched to strengthen research in the areas of yoga and meditation.
- An objective of SATYAM is to harness knowledge obtained in academic institutions and other related agencies for finding Science & Technology -led solutions that would enable us to cope with stress and strain associated with fast changing social, economic, environmental and professional circumstances
9) IMPRINT India :-
- IMPRINT is the first of its kind MHRD supported Pan-IIT + IISc joint initiative to address the major science and engineering challenges that India must address and champion to enable, empower and embolden the nation for inclusive growth and self-reliance. This novel initiative with twofold mandate is aimed at:
- (a) Developing new engineering education policy
(b) Creating a road map to pursue engineering challenges , IMPRINT provides the overarching vision that guides research into areas that are predominantly socially relevant.
10)Ground Zero Summit 2015 :-
- The Union Home Minister, Rajnath Singh recently inaugurated the Asia’s foremost Information Security Conference: Ground Zero Summit 2015
- Theme: The theme for the Summit is Digital India – ‘Securing Digital India’.
- Aim of the summit: The summit is being organized to deliberate upon various issues related to cyber security challenges emerging due to the latest technological developments
- Summary of Summit:-
- Cyber security is a big challenge these days and ‘cyber barriers’ need to be created to tackle it
- Cyber world is the fifth dimension of security along with the earlier dimensions of security i.e. land, air, water and space. The crimes related to cyber world can be multi-layered, multi-location, multi-lingual, multi-cultural and multi-legal, that’s why it is difficult to investigate and reach to the criminal
- Government has started making efforts to set up the “Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre” (I-4C). This will help in monitoring and capacity building of the cyber crimes and will also help the Law Enforcement Agencies in curtailing these crimes.
- The summit is being organized by the Indian Infosec Consortium (ICC), a not-for-profit organization formed by leading cyber security professionals of the country. With the events like Ground Zero Summit and formation of National Cyber Registry, ICC wants to consolidate the cyber security resources in the country and protect its cyberspace. The summit is the collaborative platform in Asia for cyber security experts and researchers to address emerging cyber security challenges and demonstrate cutting-edge technologies.
11) Three Gold related Scheme Launched:-
*Note:- The schemes of this nature has magnitude of data , most of them are irrelevant from UPSC exam perspective.Hence you may go through the literature of these schemes but remember as necessary.The analysis is important.
- Gold Monetisation Scheme (GMS):-
- The GMS will replace the existing Gold Deposit Scheme, 1999
- The gold will be accepted at the Collection and Purity Testing Centres (CPTC) certified by Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS). The deposit certificates will be issued by banks in equivalent of 995 fineness of gold.
- The designated banks will accept gold deposits under the Short Term (1-3 years) Bank Deposit (STBD) as well as Medium (5-7 years) and Long (12-15 years) Term Government Deposit Schemes (MLTGD). While the former will be accepted by banks on their own account, the latter will be on behalf of the Government of India. There will be provision for premature withdrawal subject to a minimum lock-in period and penalty to be determined by individual banks for the STBD.
- The interest rate in the STBD will be determined by the banks. The interest rate in the medium term bonds has been fixed at 2.25% and for the long-term bonds is 2.5% for the bonds issued in 2015-16.
- Gold sovereign bond scheme:–
- The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will issue these bonds on behalf of the central government.
- The gold bonds will be denominated in multiples of gram(s) of gold with a basic unit of one gram while the minimum investment limit is two grams.
- The maximum subscription is 500 grams per person per fiscal (April-March) and for joint holders, the limit will be applied on the first holder.
- As per the scheme, the gold bonds will be sold only to resident Indian entities including individuals, Hindu undivided families, trusts, universities, and charitable institutions.The bond tenure will be eight years with exit option beginning the fifth year onwards. They will also be tradable in the bourses.Bonds can also be used as collateral for loans.
- India gold coin and bullion scheme:-
- The gold coin and gold bullion schemes are part of the gold monetization programme.
- The coin will be the first ever national gold coin and will bear Ashok Chakra.
- Initially, the coins will be available in denominations of 5 and 10 grams. A 20 gram bullion bar will also be launched.
- As many as 15,000 coins of 5 gm, 20,000 coins of 10 gm and 3,750 bullion bars will be made available through Metals and Minerals Trading Corporations (MMTC) outlets.
Reasoning behind these Schemes:-
- Indian have a greater affinity to gold, it is the most dearly held precious metal by Indian families.It has a paramount cultural significance . Over the centuries Indians have accumulated enormous amount of gold which is locked away in their safety boxes, sitting idle , earning no return.
- On the same vein, the demand of gold has grown multi-fold in the past few years. India being a young nation(demographically) the gold demand is only going to increase and this metal plays a critical role in marriages and other ceremonies related to life.More the youth, more the marriage and more the demand for gold.
- The scheme has envisaged to unlock the potential of idle gold and put it to use. It has one major significance:-
- India is not a great producer of gold, our gold mines have never been able to meet the demand , hence we import gold in large quantities, which puts burden on Balance of Payment (Govt has to pay in dollars to get these gold , thus reducing the forex reserve too )
- With this scheme the balance of payment issue can be resolved.It also allows the depositor to earn on the idle gold.Hence it is a win-win situation for both Government and Depositor.
Recent Posts
The United Nations has shaped so much of global co-operation and regulation that we wouldn’t recognise our world today without the UN’s pervasive role in it. So many small details of our lives – such as postage and copyright laws – are subject to international co-operation nurtured by the UN.
In its 75th year, however, the UN is in a difficult moment as the world faces climate crisis, a global pandemic, great power competition, trade wars, economic depression and a wider breakdown in international co-operation.
Still, the UN has faced tough times before – over many decades during the Cold War, the Security Council was crippled by deep tensions between the US and the Soviet Union. The UN is not as sidelined or divided today as it was then. However, as the relationship between China and the US sours, the achievements of global co-operation are being eroded.
The way in which people speak about the UN often implies a level of coherence and bureaucratic independence that the UN rarely possesses. A failure of the UN is normally better understood as a failure of international co-operation.
We see this recently in the UN’s inability to deal with crises from the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, to civil conflict in Syria, and the failure of the Security Council to adopt a COVID-19 resolution calling for ceasefires in conflict zones and a co-operative international response to the pandemic.
The UN administration is not primarily to blame for these failures; rather, the problem is the great powers – in the case of COVID-19, China and the US – refusing to co-operate.
Where states fail to agree, the UN is powerless to act.
Marking the 75th anniversary of the official formation of the UN, when 50 founding nations signed the UN Charter on June 26, 1945, we look at some of its key triumphs and resounding failures.
Five successes
1. Peacekeeping
The United Nations was created with the goal of being a collective security organisation. The UN Charter establishes that the use of force is only lawful either in self-defence or if authorised by the UN Security Council. The Security Council’s five permanent members, being China, US, UK, Russia and France, can veto any such resolution.
The UN’s consistent role in seeking to manage conflict is one of its greatest successes.
A key component of this role is peacekeeping. The UN under its second secretary-general, the Swedish statesman Dag Hammarskjöld – who was posthumously awarded the Nobel Peace prize after he died in a suspicious plane crash – created the concept of peacekeeping. Hammarskjöld was responding to the 1956 Suez Crisis, in which the US opposed the invasion of Egypt by its allies Israel, France and the UK.
UN peacekeeping missions involve the use of impartial and armed UN forces, drawn from member states, to stabilise fragile situations. “The essence of peacekeeping is the use of soldiers as a catalyst for peace rather than as the instruments of war,” said then UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, when the forces won the 1988 Nobel Peace Prize following missions in conflict zones in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Central America and Europe.
However, peacekeeping also counts among the UN’s major failures.
2. Law of the Sea
Negotiated between 1973 and 1982, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) set up the current international law of the seas. It defines states’ rights and creates concepts such as exclusive economic zones, as well as procedures for the settling of disputes, new arrangements for governing deep sea bed mining, and importantly, new provisions for the protection of marine resources and ocean conservation.
Mostly, countries have abided by the convention. There are various disputes that China has over the East and South China Seas which present a conflict between power and law, in that although UNCLOS creates mechanisms for resolving disputes, a powerful state isn’t necessarily going to submit to those mechanisms.
Secondly, on the conservation front, although UNCLOS is a huge step forward, it has failed to adequately protect oceans that are outside any state’s control. Ocean ecosystems have been dramatically transformed through overfishing. This is an ecological catastrophe that UNCLOS has slowed, but failed to address comprehensively.
3. Decolonisation
The idea of racial equality and of a people’s right to self-determination was discussed in the wake of World War I and rejected. After World War II, however, those principles were endorsed within the UN system, and the Trusteeship Council, which monitored the process of decolonisation, was one of the initial bodies of the UN.
Although many national independence movements only won liberation through bloody conflicts, the UN has overseen a process of decolonisation that has transformed international politics. In 1945, around one third of the world’s population lived under colonial rule. Today, there are less than 2 million people living in colonies.
When it comes to the world’s First Nations, however, the UN generally has done little to address their concerns, aside from the non-binding UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples of 2007.
4. Human rights
The Human Rights Declaration of 1948 for the first time set out fundamental human rights to be universally protected, recognising that the “inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world”.
Since 1948, 10 human rights treaties have been adopted – including conventions on the rights of children and migrant workers, and against torture and discrimination based on gender and race – each monitored by its own committee of independent experts.
The language of human rights has created a new framework for thinking about the relationship between the individual, the state and the international system. Although some people would prefer that political movements focus on ‘liberation’ rather than ‘rights’, the idea of human rights has made the individual person a focus of national and international attention.
5. Free trade
Depending on your politics, you might view the World Trade Organisation as a huge success, or a huge failure.
The WTO creates a near-binding system of international trade law with a clear and efficient dispute resolution process.
The majority Australian consensus is that the WTO is a success because it has been good for Australian famers especially, through its winding back of subsidies and tariffs.
However, the WTO enabled an era of globalisation which is now politically controversial.
Recently, the US has sought to disrupt the system. In addition to the trade war with China, the Trump Administration has also refused to appoint tribunal members to the WTO’s Appellate Body, so it has crippled the dispute resolution process. Of course, the Trump Administration is not the first to take issue with China’s trade strategies, which include subsidises for ‘State Owned Enterprises’ and demands that foreign firms transfer intellectual property in exchange for market access.
The existence of the UN has created a forum where nations can discuss new problems, and climate change is one of them. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was set up in 1988 to assess climate science and provide policymakers with assessments and options. In 1992, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change created a permanent forum for negotiations.
However, despite an international scientific body in the IPCC, and 165 signatory nations to the climate treaty, global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to increase.
Under the Paris Agreement, even if every country meets its greenhouse gas emission targets we are still on track for ‘dangerous warming’. Yet, no major country is even on track to meet its targets; while emissions will probably decline this year as a result of COVID-19, atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases will still increase.
This illustrates a core conundrum of the UN in that it opens the possibility of global cooperation, but is unable to constrain states from pursuing their narrowly conceived self-interests. Deep co-operation remains challenging.
Five failures of the UN
1. Peacekeeping
During the Bosnian War, Dutch peacekeeping forces stationed in the town of Srebrenica, declared a ‘safe area’ by the UN in 1993, failed in 1995 to stop the massacre of more than 8000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces. This is one of the most widely discussed examples of the failures of international peacekeeping operations.
On the massacre’s 10th anniversary, then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan wrote that the UN had “made serious errors of judgement, rooted in a philosophy of impartiality”, contributing to a mass murder that would “haunt our history forever”.
If you look at some of the other infamous failures of peacekeeping missions – in places such as Rwanda, Somalia and Angola – it is the limited powers given to peacekeeping operations that have resulted in those failures.
2. The invasion of Iraq
The invasion of Iraq by the US in 2003, which was unlawful and without Security Council authorisation, reflects the fact that the UN is has very limited capacity to constrain the actions of great powers.
The Security Council designers created the veto power so that any of the five permanent members could reject a Council resolution, so in that way it is programmed to fail when a great power really wants to do something that the international community generally condemns.
In the case of the Iraq invasion, the US didn’t veto a resolution, but rather sought authorisation that it did not get. The UN, if you go by the idea of collective security, should have responded by defending Iraq against this unlawful use of force.
The invasion proved a humanitarian disaster with the loss of more than 400,000 lives, and many believe that it led to the emergence of the terrorist Islamic State.
3. Refugee crises
The UN brokered the 1951 Refugee Convention to address the plight of people displaced in Europe due to World War II; years later, the 1967 Protocol removed time and geographical restrictions so that the Convention can now apply universally (although many countries in Asia have refused to sign it, owing in part to its Eurocentric origins).
Despite these treaties, and the work of the UN High Commission for Refugees, there is somewhere between 30 and 40 million refugees, many of them, such as many Palestinians, living for decades outside their homelands. This is in addition to more than 40 million people displaced within their own countries.
While for a long time refugee numbers were reducing, in recent years, particularly driven by the Syrian conflict, there have been increases in the number of people being displaced.
During the COVID-19 crisis, boatloads of Rohingya refugees were turned away by port after port. This tragedy has echoes of pre-World War II when ships of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany were refused entry by multiple countries.
And as a catastrophe of a different kind looms, there is no international framework in place for responding to people who will be displaced by rising seas and other effects of climate change.
4. Conflicts without end
Across the world, there is a shopping list of unresolved civil conflicts and disputed territories.
Palestine and Kashmir are two of the longest-running failures of the UN to resolve disputed lands. More recent, ongoing conflicts include the civil wars in Syria and Yemen.
The common denominator of unresolved conflicts is either division among the great powers, or a lack of international interest due to the geopolitical stakes not being sufficiently high. For instance, the inaction during the Rwandan civil war in the 1990s was not due to a division among great powers, but rather a lack of political will to engage.
In Syria, by contrast, Russia and the US have opposing interests and back opposing sides: Russia backs the government of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, whereas the US does not.
5. Acting like it’s 1945
The UN is increasingly out of step with the reality of geopolitics today.
The permanent members of the Security Council reflect the division of power internationally at the end of World War II. The continuing exclusion of Germany, Japan, and rising powers such as India and Indonesia, reflects the failure to reflect the changing balance of power.
Also, bodies such as the IMF and the World Bank, which are part of the UN system, continue to be dominated by the West. In response, China has created potential rival institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
Western domination of UN institutions undermines their credibility. However, a more fundamental problem is that institutions designed in 1945 are a poor fit with the systemic global challenges – of which climate change is foremost – that we face today.